The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
With the advent of pervasive personal cell phones, consumers have a growing desire to interface with information technology in a seamless fashion. Apple®'s Siri™ interface represents one possible interface offered to consumers that allows consumers to access information via voice recognition technology. Unfortunately, Siri merely operates as an interface to a search engine and does not offer actual real-world assistance to a user. A more useful technology would allow users to gain access to assistive technologies that are contextually relevant in a seamless fashion.
Some effort has been directed to providing access to virtual assistants. In a similar vein to Siri, U.S. Pat. No. 8,346,563 to Hjelm et al. titled “System and Methods for Delivering Advanced Natural Language Interaction Applications”, filed Aug. 2, 2012, describes a virtual assistant that leverages language recognition rules to form appropriate responses to a user's request. Similar to Hjelm, International patent application publication WO 01/67241 to Ulmer et al. titled “Virtual Assistant Engine” filed Mar. 5, 2001, describes using a speech recognition engine as an interface to a virtual assistant application. From a visual perspective, U.S. Pat. No. 7,836,437 to Kacmarcik titled “Semantic Annotations for Virtual Objects”, filed Feb. 10, 2006, indicates that virtual assistants can appear on a monitor to answer questions to provide help with an application and describes scattering pixels across an object identifier to limit recognition of characters in a virtual world. Unfortunately, such approaches have limited applicability to a single purpose and fail to providing insight into how a virtual assistant could provide assistance to a person based on a person's current circumstance.
Interestingly, some effort has been directed to scanning documents to aid in processing documents, but has not been applied for assistive technologies. U.S. Pat. No. 8,162,125 to Csultis et al. titled “Apparatus and System for Imaging Currency Bills and Financial Documents and Method for Using the Same”, filed Apr. 13, 2010, describes a teller system having a document processing system capable of applying optical character recognition to currency or checks, and having teller terminals. The Csultis approach is helpful to a bank teller, but fails to appreciate that such information can be leveraged to give rise to assistance of a consumer. Additionally, Csultis only contemplates a single purpose system that populates data fields on a bank teller screen.
Further, some effort has been applied to recognizing consumer features for security reasons. U.S. patent application publication 2004/0169722 to Pena titled “Method and System for Computer-Aided Telecommunication and Financial Transactions”, filed Mar. 9, 2004, discusses allowing subscribers to conduct real-time visual communications with remote parties, possibly via automated teller machines. Users can be identified through voice or finger print recognition as an added layer of security. Similarly, international patent application publication WO 2007/020394, to Murdoch et al. titled “Mobile Account Management” filed Aug. 11, 2006, also discusses using fingerprinting and voice pattern recognition as a security measure. Thus, Pena and Murdoch only use recognition technology narrowly to enable authentication for a single purpose system.
Still, some effort has been applied toward offering virtualized ATM services. International patent application publication WO 2008/065215 to Luca De Tena Sainz titled “Method and System for Performing Banking Transactions by Simulating a Virtual ATM by Means of a Mobile Telecommunications Device”, filed Feb. 16, 2007, describes a virtual ATM capable of contacting a back agent by a video call and use of voice recognition. Although Luca De Tena Sainz describes virtualized ATM services, Luca De Tena Sainz fails to appreciate that consumers require a broad spectrum of assistant types.
Although the known art seeks to provide assistive technologies, the assistive technologies are purpose built and are not assistive across a broad spectrum of circumstances. Thus, there remains a need to allow consumers to engage with assistive technologies that are applicable to the consumer's circumstances.
All publications herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.